The present invention relates to devices, systems and methods for electropolishing metallic material, and more particularly to an anode/cathode system having a rolling block and unique mandrel configurations.
Medical devices, such as intravascular stents, may be constructed of a metal or polymer and generally cylindrical in shape and hollow, are implanted within the vessel to maintain lumen size. The stent acts as a scaffold to support the lumen in an open position. Configurations of stents include a cylindrical sleeve defined by a mesh, interconnected stents, or like segments. Exemplary stents are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,739,762; 5,133,732; 5,292,33; 5,421,955 and 6,090,127, the contents of which are hereby incorporated herein in their entirety by reference thereto.
One method of making a stent is by using a machine controlled laser to cut a thin walled tubular member, such as stainless steel tubing, to remove portions of the tubing in the desired pattern for the stent, leaving relatively untouched the portions of the metallic tubing that are to form rings or other patterns in the tubing. The stent may be manufactured by direct laser cutting from a single metal tube using a finely focused laser beam passing through a coaxial gas jet structure to impinge on the working surface of the tube as the linear and rotary velocity of the tube is precisely controlled. An exemplary system and process for laser cutting may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,759,192, the content of which is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety by reference thereto. Further, other processes of forming stent rings are possible and are known in the art, such as, but not limited to, chemical etching, electronic discharge machining and stamping. An exemplary system and process for chemical etching may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,893, the content of which is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety by reference thereto.
There is a need for, and what was heretofore unavailable, an automated system and method for electropolishing medical devices, such as laser cut stents. The present invention solves these and other needs.